urn:taro:utexas.hrc.00299p1Edouard Dujardin: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center [Part 1]Finding aid created by Monique Daviau, Richard Workman, and
Catherine StollarCollection cataloged with financial assistance from the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation.Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, 2004Finding aid encoded in EAD 2002 on
June 25, 2004Finding aid written in
English.The University of Texas at Austin Harry Ransom
Humanities Research CenterDujardin, Edouard,
1861-1949Edouard Dujardin
Papers1861-1951105 boxes, 1 oversized box
(44.52 linear feet)Edouard Dujardin is
perhaps most famous for his first novel
Les Lauriers sont coupés
which James Joyce credited as his inspiration to use the interior monologue in
Ulysses. Dujardin's papers document his
career as novelist, poet, playwright, publiciste,
journalist, and history of religion professor. Material written in English, French,
and GermanTXRC06-A19

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, which provided funds for the processing and cataloging of this
collection.

Biographical Sketch

Edouard Emile Louis Dujardin was born near Blois, France, on November
10, 1861, the only child of Alphonse (a sea captain) and
Théophile Dujardin. The family moved to Rouen, where Edouard
attended school. He subsequently studied in Paris in preparation for entering
the École Normale Supérieure, but, in spite of
having been an excellent student, he did not pass the entrance examinations.
Instead, he followed his musical interests and enrolled briefly in the Paris
Conservatoire. Among the lifelong friendships formed during his school years
were those with the writer Aristide Marie and the composers Claude Debussy and
Paul Dukas.

In 1882, supported by a modest stipend from his parents, Dujardin
began his literary career by writing articles on music. That spring he was sent
to London to report on the first production in a non-German-speaking country of
Wagner's complete

Ring des Nibelungen, and, despite his
ignorance of German, he fell completely under Wagner's spell. Later that same
year he made the first of many pilgrimages to Germany to hear Wagner's operas.
In 1884 in Munich he met the Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whom
Dujardin credited with enhancing his appreciation of Wagner and in discussions
with whom he concocted the idea of a French review devoted to Wagner's music
and ideas. Thus was born the
Revue wagnérienne, which
appeared from February 1885 until July 1888.

During this period, Dujardin
also became a member of the circle that met Mondays at the home of the
Symbolist poet, Stéphane Mallarmé, who also had a
profound influence on Dujardin's life. Dujardin and Mallarmé
remained close friends until Mallarmé's death in 1898; Dujardin
even proposed unsuccessfully to Mallarmé's daughter
Geneviève in 1889.

In 1886 Dujardin assumed editorship of
the

Revue indépendente, a
journal devoted to literature, turning it into an important voice for the
symbolists. His earliest books were first published in the pages of this
journal: the short stories
Les Hantises in 1886; the prose poem
A la gloire d'Antonia in 1887; his novel
Les Lauriers sont coupés in
1887 (published in book form in 1888), which James Joyce credited as having
given him the idea for the interior monologue style of writing;
Litanies, a collection of musical settings
of his own poems in 1888; and the prose poem
Pour la vierge du roc ardent in
1888.

Dujardin's parents lived briefly in Paris during this period,
having bought a house there, but eventually returned to Rouen. Upon their
deaths, Dujardin inherited the Paris house and a large sum of money. Part of
his fortune apparently went to the building of Val-Changis, a
château in Fontainebleau, and part went into lavish productions
of a trilogy of plays:

Dujardin's
expensive and somewhat dandyish tastes in clothing and jewelry and his
willingness to run up debts deceived many of his friends into thinking he was
wealthy. He was a frequent part of Parisian night life as well, with his
friends Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles Conder, William Rothenstein, Victor
Joze, and Louis Anquetin. Dujardin also had large numbers of female friends,
many of them involved in the theater in some way, and many of them in frequent
need of financial assistance. During the years 1883-1885 he had an intense love
affair with the actress Andrée de Mora (the model for
Léa d'Arsay in

Les Lauriers sont coupés)
and proposed marriage to Tony Riedel, the daughter of German musician Carl
Riedel, and between 1890 and 1893 he was involved with the dancers Jeanne
Fontaine, Jane Avril, Mary Hamilton, and Marguerite Guez, and the actress Jane
Thomsen.

All this activity took a financial toll, and by 1893 Dujardin
found himself near ruin. He entered a period of vigorous business activity that
lasted until 1908 and apparently involved a variety of endeavors including real
estate, gambling, importing and exporting goods, offering marketing and
advertising services for periodicals, retailing of beauty products, and perhaps
other money-making ventures. He also worked as a journalist for a number of
publications during this period, including

Journée and
Fin de siècle, whose
personal advertisements caught the eye of police, resulting in Dujardin's
sentencing in 1894 to jail time and a fine for offenses against public morals,
which were later remitted.

Dujardin still managed to find time for an
active personal life. In February 1896 a young would-be actress and artist's
model named Madeleine Boisguillaume gave birth to his son, Emile, and in
November of the same year, he married Germaine Teisset in a civil ceremony.
Germaine was a poorly educated but apparently beautiful girl who had also
caught the eye of the painter Charles Conder, and whose inability to choose
between the two men almost led them to fight a duel in 1893. The marriage ended
in a separation in 1901. The couple did not actually divorce until 1924, when
Dujardin was preparing to remarry.

In the early years of the new century
Dujardin began to turn his attention to scholarly pursuits. He enrolled in the
École Practique des Hautes Études as a student of
the history of religion, received his diploma in 1906, and the same year
published the first of a series of works in the field,

La Source du fleuve
chrétien. In 1913 he was given a lectureship at the
École, where he gave classes in religious studies until 1922. He
continued his research for the rest of his life, publishing his magnum opus,
Histoire ancienne du dieu Jésus
in four parts:
Le Dieu Jésus: Essai sur les
origines et la formation de la légende
évangelique (1927),
Grandeur et décadence de la
critique, sa rénovation: Le Cas de l'abbé Turmel
(1931),
Le Première
génération chrétienne: Son destin
révolutionnaire (1935), and
L'Apôtre en face des
apôtres (1945).

During this period Dujardin kept
up his output of creative works as well. In 1898 he published his second and
last novel,

Dujardin also continued his involvement with
journalism. In 1904 he cofounded the

Revue des idées with
Rémy de Gourmont and managed the journal for four years before
turning it over to Gourmont. From 1906 to 1908 he worked as
publiciste for Ernest Judet's
Eclair, a journal with such a strong
pro-German bias that it brought both Judet and Dujardin into court on charges
of treason, of which both were eventually acquitted. From 1917 to 1922 he
edited
Cahiers idéalistes, a
journal he founded to promote opposition to the war. In the 1930s Dujardin
began to write travel pieces for commercial magazines, and just before World
War II he gave a series of radio broadcasts on literary
topics.

Dujardin's personal life remained eventful as well. On separating
from Germaine in 1901 he briefly resumed an alliance with Madeleine, the mother
of his son, had an affair with Jane Hugard, and then took up with the actress
Yvonne André for several years. After the end of their affair,
he resumed his relationship with Jane Hugard, a successful dancer with the
Paris Opéra and a teacher of dance whose tendency toward
depression was aggravated by the death of her son Jean in 1914. Their affair
lasted for several years before gradually evolving into one of the closest
friendships of Dujardin's later life. Following their breakup, Dujardin had a
brief affair with his Swiss secretary, Lony Bauen, which resulted in a second
child, his daughter Rosegrande, born in 1920. As he had done for his son,
Dujardin furnished financial support for both mother and child and maintained
close ties. Rosegrande lived in Switzerland with her mother until 1935, when
Dujardin brought her to Paris for school.

In 1924 Dujardin married Marie
Chenou, a woman thirty years his junior who wrote novels and poetry under her
married name. Dujardin finally found what he said was his dearest hope: a
peaceful and productive old age. They remained married until his death at the
age of eighty-seven on October 31, 1949.

Handwritten and typed manuscripts; correspondence; financial, legal,
and business records; carbon and letterpress copies, and printed material
comprise the Edouard Dujardin Papers. The papers are arranged in five series:
I. Literary Career, 1872-1950 (12 boxes), II. Correspondence, 1871-1949 (83
boxes), III. Personal Papers, 1872-1950 (5.5 boxes), IV. Family Papers
1861-1950 (1.5 boxes), and V. Third-Party Works and Correspondence, 1879-1951
(3 boxes). The vast majority of the collection is in French, although some
documents in German, English, Latin, Italian, and Greek are present as well.
All materials were acquired by purchase in 1977.

Series I. Literary
Career contains typed and handwritten creative works that span from Dujardin's
childhood to his old age. While his earlier works were focused on poetics and
literary fiction, his later works mostly relate to his interest in early
Christianity. Also contained in this series are items relating to his teaching,
including lecture notes and radio scripts.

Series III. Personal Papers is composed of bills and receipts, travel
documents, school records, and items relating to Dujardin's business interests.
Series IV. Family Papers contains birth certificates, correspondence, works,
school records, and legal papers concerning members of Dujardin's family.
Letters between Dujardin and his family are located in Series II.
Correspondence.

Manuscripts submitted for publication to one of
Dujardin's literary journals are found in Series V. Third-Party Works and
Correspondence, including the dossier of materials from

Cahiers idéalistes.
Correspondence between his friends, acquaintances, and persons interested in
Dujardin's work are also found in this series.
Arrangement

Due to size, this inventory had been divided into
two files: one containing the folder list and Index of Works and another for
the Index of Correspondents. The files may be accessed by clicking on the
highlighted text below:

Additional papers of Edouard Dujardin at the Ransom Center are located
in the Artine Artinian, F. S. Flint, Joseph Maunsell Hone, James Joyce, Carlton
Lake, George Moore, and Harry Quilter manuscript collections. The Vertical File
contains invitations, newspaper clippings, and scrapbooks separated from the
Dujardin manuscripts. Photographs of Dujardin, his family and friends, and his
château, Val-Changis are located in the Photography Collection,
and architectural plans of Val-Changis can be found in the Carlton Lake Art
Collection. The Library holds a number of Dujardin's published works, many of
which belong to the Carlton Lake Collection.

The Literary Career series is arranged in two
subseries: A. Works, 1872-1947 (11 boxes) and B. Other Literary Papers,
1893-1950 (1 box). The papers are arranged alphabetically by title. Typed and
handwritten manuscripts make up the bulk of the Works subseries, covering
Dujardin's entire career from juvenilia (the earliest a poem,

Ode à mes bons parents,
written at age eleven) to the last work he completed at age eighty-six (
L'Apôtre en face des
apôtres, 1945). The collection includes the handwritten
manuscript for his first published book,
Les Hantises (1886, here titled
Les Fantasmagories), as well as
complete or nearly complete manuscripts for
Le Chevalier du passé
(1892),
Le Mystère du dieu mort et
resuscité (1923),
De l'ancêtre mythique au chef
moderne (1943), and
L'Apôtre en face des
apôtres (1945). For
La Source du fleuve chrétien
(1906) there is a printed copy of the first edition with extensive
alterations in Dujardin's hand. Of special interest is a handwritten manuscript
representing about one-third of his best-known and most influential work,
Les Lauriers sont
coupés (1888). In addition the collection includes
manuscripts of poems, a wide range of lectures and talks, study notes,
articles, plays (several unpublished), radio scripts, and scenarios for stage
works.

Among the materials in the Other Literary Papers subseries are a
number of items that document various facets of Dujardin's career: lists of his
theatrical works, of contributors to his journals, and of colleagues to whom he
sent copies of his works; articles about him by other authors; copies of the

Edouard Dujardin was a meticulous letter writer who
kept carbon copies of much of his outgoing correspondence. He also added the
dates to most of his incoming correspondence, and saved a remarkably large
proportion of it. These letters provide insight into his literary life as well
as his many friendships, romances, and business relationships. This series is
arranged alphabetically by the name of his correspondent, with both outgoing
and incoming correspondence interfiled. There are four boxes of letters from
unidentified correspondents, arranged chronologically. An index of identified
correspondents is present in this finding aid.

The greatest number of
letters concern Dujardin's various literary enterprises. His letters to Albert
Messein cover the second publication of

Les Lauriers sont
coupés in 1924, and throughout the series the inner
workings of the numerous journals he wrote for and operated, such as
Revue wagnérienne and
Cahiers idealistes, are exhibited.
Dujardin counted a number of renowned French authors as friends and
acquaintances, and his correspondents include Guillaume Apollinaire,
André Breton, Colette, Paul Éluard, Paul Fort,
J.-K. Huysman, Pierre Louÿs, Stéphane
Mallarmé, Gaston Picard, Han Ryner, Paul Valéry,
Willy, and his childhood friend, Aristide Marie.

Correspondence between
Dujardin and several notable figures, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, are
included, as well as a small number of letters from James Joyce and Richard
Wagner. A strong Germanophile, Dujardin received numerous letters in German,
and frequently a French translation of these is present. Copies of letters
Dujardin sent to Adolf Hitler in 1943 are included in this series.

Other
correspondence refers to Dujardin's romantic relationships with numerous women.
Of note are the letters describing the oftentimes tumultuous relationships with
the mothers of his two children, Madeleine Boisguillaume and Lony Bauen. There
are letters from his other mistresses, including Jane Avril and
Andrée de Mora. The letters between Dujardin and his longtime
confidant Jane Hugard are not limited to their romantic involvement, but also
reflect upon their theatrical and business collaborations.

Letters
between Dujardin and his children, son Emile (born in 1896) and daughter
Rosegrande (born in 1920) show his concern for their schooling and upbringing.
Also of note are letters relating to Dujardin's efforts to have Emile released
from a German internment camp during World War I. Edouard Dujardin's letters to
and from and his parents, Alphonse and Théophile, as well as
between extended family members, are also present.

Throughout the
entirety of the correspondence series, Dujardin makes mention of his financial
difficulties. Mixed in among the correspondence are financial documents
regarding Dujardin's business and financial interests, such as Boisguillaume et
Cie., rental and maintenance of his Fontainebleau château,
Val-Changis, and communications with his employees.

This series of financial and legal records,
correspondence, school records, miscellaneous notes and lists is organized into
four subseries: A. Financial, B. Legal, C. Travel, and D. Other. Correspondence
found in this series is not included in the Index of Correspondents.

Subseries A. Financial, 1881-1949

The Financial
subseries is arranged chronologically and contains hotel bills and receipts;
real estate leases, bills, and correspondence; dental records; and loans and
lists of expenses. Hotel correspondence included in this subseries relates to
charges accrued or paid by Dujardin. All other correspondence concerning hotels
is located in subseries C. Travel. A portion of
Dujardin's financial records concern his various
mistresses and wives including Yvonne André (born Henriette
Barbiaux), Germaine (Teisset) Dujardin, Marie Dujardin, and Jane Hugard.
Financial records for the real estate enterprise he undertook jointly with
Madeleine Boisguillaume are filed in Series II. Correspondence under
Boisguillaume et Cie.

Subseries B. Legal, 1887-1938

Materials in the Legal
subseries are arranged chronologically and document
Dujardin's legal and criminal affairs: accidents in 1894
and 1924; his divorce from Germaine (Teisset) Dujardin; his house Val-Changis;
his involvement in Ernest Judet's Journal

Éclair; his
participation in the co-founding of J. Hugard and Company; and the publication
of
The Ancient History of the God Jesus
(1938), the English version of his
Histoire ancienne du dieu
Jésus.
Subseries C. Travel, 1886-1943

This subseries contains
hotel, railroad, and post office correspondence, and documents
Dujardin's frequent travel and changes of address. Also
included are Italian visas, passports, and travel directions.

Subseries D. Other, 1872-1950

The final subseries
contains various documents relating to Dujardin's life
such as his school records, a list of correspondence he apparently sold, and
notes on dinner parties he hosted. Perhaps the most interesting document in the
subseries is an agreement signed by representatives for both Dujardin and
Charles Conder preventing a duel between the two men.

Correspondence, birth certificates, works, school
records, and legal papers concerning individuals related to Dujardin by birth
or marriage comprise Series IV. Family Papers. The series is arranged
alphabetically by family member and the letters are included in the Index of
Correspondents. Also included are documents relating to Madeleine (Louise
Hortense) Boisguillaume and Lony (Melanie) Bauen, the mothers of
Dujardin's children Emile and Rosegrande. Letters
concerning Dujardin's death are included in his wife
Marie Dujardin's folders. Third-party family
correspondence is also included in this series; correspondence to Dujardin from
his family is located in Series II. Correspondence.

Handwritten, typed, and carbon copy correspondence and
manuscripts by persons other than Dujardin and his family make up Series V.
Third-Party Works and Correspondence. The series is divided into two subseries:
A. Works and B. Correspondence. Both are arranged alphabetically by author.
Most of the works in this series were published in
Dujardin's journals. A dossier of material from the
monthly journal

Cahiers idéalistes,
founded by Dujardin, contains published works by other authors and often
includes a manuscript and proof copy of each work. Translations of a letter by
Henry David Thoreau and a poem by Walt Whitman are included in the
dossier.

Most of subseries B. Correspondence are letters to Marie
Dujardin, Germaine (Teisset) Dujardin, Jane Hugard, or an unspecified
"Madame Dujardin." Some
correspondence is addressed to the Comité Edouard Dujardin which
organized a dinner in honor of Dujardin with special guest James Joyce on June
27, 1932. The Comité also invited and elicited responses from
individuals who signed a 1926 petition supporting the production of one of
Dujardin's plays at the
Comédie-Française. Members of the
Comité included Valéry Larbaud, Jean Cassou,
Louis de Gonzague-Frick, Maurice Martin du Gard, and others.